GOP's election win rocks Dems' health care work

HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., center, arrives for a meeting with the media, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010, in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., center, arrives for a meeting with the media, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010, in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., center, arrives for a meeting with the media, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010, in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., center, arrives for a meeting with the media, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010, in his office on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

GOP's election win rocks Dems' health care work

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

A stinging loss Tuesday in Massachusetts has cost President Obama and the Democrats the 60-vote Senate majority they've relied on to push a historic health care overhaul to the verge of enactment.

Now what? It's miles of bad road in any direction.

Obama and party leaders anxiously worked through fallback options - none good - for salvaging the Democrats' 60-year quest to provide health insurance to all Americans.

After a year of improbable twists and turns, the unthinkable happened Tuesday. Democrats lost Edward Kennedy's seat to a Republican upstart, and with it faced the prospect of not being able to pass the legislation that embodies Obama's top domestic priority and was Kennedy's dream.

Democrats don't appear to have enough time to resolve differences between the House and Senate bills - and get cost and coverage estimates back from the Congressional Budget Office - before Republican Scott Brown is sworn in in the next 10 days.

That leaves House Democrats with the unpalatable option of passing a Senate bill that many of them profoundly disagree with.

"How do we do it with 59?" lamented liberal Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

Independents turned against the sweeping health care legislation and the Democratic base lost its enthusiasm, Weiner said. Democratic lawmakers must show they got the message by regrouping, considering a time-out on health care and perhaps passing a more modest bill, he argued.

The defeat of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley by Brown, a state senator, leaves Obama and Democratic leaders facing a series of wrenching decisions fraught with escalating political risk.

Significant disputes between the House and Senate would have to be settled by presidential fiat, and Democratic lawmakers would have to move in virtual lockstep to enact the bill, even as Republican opposition intensifies.

The cleanest option calls for the House to quickly pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama for his signature. But that ignores at least two significant problems.

Labor unions are adamantly opposed to an insurance tax in the Senate bill, and they successfully negotiated with Obama last week to weaken it in key respects. Second, a core group of anti-abortion Democrats says the Senate bill's provisions on restricting taxpayer funding for abortion are too weak.